Man Town
by cornwallace
Summary: Population: 1. The mayor. The one story Lord Kelvin is afraid to review - not a single error shall be found within the body of this story, for the error lies within you, for not having read this sooner. A tribute to Wingless Rain, and his story to come.
1. Sacrificial lamb

_  
Sacrificial lamb

* * *

It begins as it should - a cacophony of gunfire and the screams of the mortal.  
A righteous descent into chaos.

Desperation. Beads of sweat.  
Only the strong survive.

Swarms of lead painting the sand crimson. Deathrattles and rattlesnakes. Boots striking the sand. Imprint. The creature involuntarily screams as it runs, trying to catch its breath. His friends, not so lucky.  
Dust clouds around him as the slugs are buried. Gun's empty. All shots fired. All shots missed.  
Chain from his collar dragging a trail of its own behind him.

The useless device tucked away in his waistband. .357 loaded with .38 special. The first time he's ever fired a gun.

* * *

A structure both organic and inorganic. Skin and fur fused into blackened titanium. The project both a success and a failure. Reconstructed mobian. Powerful, skilled, efficient, intelligent, without remorse: successful.  
Obedient slave: unsuccessful.

Right arm resembles a charred skeleton - bones of impossibly strong metal encasing wires and circuits. One eye organic, the other a glowing red lens with many filters and zoom functions.  
Last defense effort that went awry.

Armor resembling a primitive design. Black leather texture riddled with nanomachines that flex and bend to the shape of a bullet rather than allowing it to tear through.  
When organic tissue is damaged, the titanium alloy reinforcing it immediately responds with first aid, rebuilding what little organic structure is left with special plastics and synthetics and testosterone.

* * *

Three.

Unload my sawed off double-barrel shotgun. Stuff the unfired shells into my leather pocket. Fish around until I feel the metal from the cold slug cylinders.  
Stuff them into the barrel as if they were ammunition and stuff the slugs inside them, for the sake of range.

Lead, calculate the masked mobian's next step. Fire.  
Half a somersault later and the corpse lays on its back, cooking in the desert sun. Recalibrate. Fire.  
Another unfortunate creature takes its last step. Straight through its temples, the straps of its gas mask breaking apart. The device slides from her face, a kitsune with gorgeous white fur. She falls, confused, straight through the sand at her feet and into oblivion.

The leader, a walrus on a segway with sand tires. Pop the weapon open - discharge the casings from the cylinders.  
Only reload one. One is all I need.

Eye tracks his next move. Weapon fires. His ankle explodes.  
His screams echo the desert as his puny vehicle finds a rock to crash into.

Casing ejects. Remove cylinders. Shells replace them.  
Snap.

The walrus cries and writhes around in the sand, a red pool building up around its lower half. He sees me coming, draws a gun from his belt and begins firing.  
Couldn't be stuffed figuring out what hit me and what didn't.

Approach. Stare.  
Its name is Rotor. A creature sacked from the recesses of my mind. A sentiment at best.

"Y-you!" it cries. "We killed you!"

Not quite. I don't bother confirming his eyes with a response.

"What have you got?"

"The segway," he stammers. "Th-the weapon. It's all yours. Take it."

"It's mine anyway," I say, thumbing back the right hammer on the weapon. "What else ye got?"

He waves his hands in front of his face, defensively.  
Defiance incurs the maximum penalty - a slow and painful death.

"Please!" the pathetic creature begs. "We were once allies, my goblin!"

Reaching up to me. Leaning forward. His lower back against the hot, unforgiving land. I kick him over onto his stomach, and it's comical how easily he folds. How quickly he complies.  
Boot caresses his shoulder as he rolls over, sobbing, scared for his pathetic life. Fitting.

Knee raised, weighted boot connects with his spine towards the top of his back, rendering his soft body useless. Air escapes his lungs in a bloody screech that splashes the earth in front of his face.

Eyes follow the footsteps.

* * *

Tracks lead me right to him.  
Bald fleshy pink creature cried, scoots away. He knows me, doesn't bother to make friends.

His cries are the same.

"Please," it says, dragging a trail in the sand behind him. "Please. What do you want."

Doesn't expect me to answer. "What ye got?"  
Shudders at the sound of my voice. Small satisfaction.

"A-anything, sir!" he crawls from his prone position and into a prayer. "A-anything you want I- ... I just need help getting back, sir."

Bury the end of my weapon into his temple and his wide dilated eyes snap shut.  
Whimpering. Pathetic.

"R-Robotropolis, your likeness," he squeaks. "I am the master's favorite! K-kidnapped by vagabonds! They had no idea! Buh-but you!"

Eyes narrow. "But me."  
Screams from the walrus echo the desert.

"Y-you know a deal when you see it! Yes! You return me to Robo-truh-tropolis and back to the doctor master! You guh-get your riches, indefinitely!"

Fingers on left hand meet inside the loop of a cuff. Forefinger and middle finger toss the set of handcuffs towards the puny human. Make eye contact.  
Nod towards them. He knows what to do.

"This is your contract. You put those on, you take me to a set of wheels, weapons, and ammunition at the very least. You disappoint me, you die. Understand?"

He nods frantically, snapping his own wrists into the irons.  
"Tuh-take me to master! He will repay you!"

* * *

The slack of the chains rattles loosely between his neck and the unfeeling grip of my right hand.  
Left hand designated on the butt of the sawed off shotgun. Ready to draw.

Creature bitches and moans about his legs hurting. About how it's too hot. His name is Colin. I know, because he told me several times, asking for my name as a followup. I just stare, gesture him forward with the shotgun.

Sun crawls across the horizon. Summer. Few, if any, appreciate this season beyond the mountains.

Keep pressing him south. He sweats, he pleads, he tries to make conversation.  
It's dark and I march him off path. We find a nook for him to curl up in. I keep my back to the canyon and my finger on the trigger guard.

* * *

"Your mind is decaying."

"And taunts from you are wearing thin."

"A broken mind collapsing onto another catastrophe. You could easily escape from this."  
"Kill."  
"Destroy."  
"Rape."

"A high price to be payed at reasonable demand."

"Foolishness." Echoes of a voice desperate to break me.  
"Weakness." The cold tendrils of its grasp caress the side of my cheek.  
"Pathetic."

"I'll pry the flesh from the tendrils of the weak, the strong, the ethereal. Not even god can protect you."

"Welcome the god~"  
"~into your heart~"  
"~you foul beast..."

"I'll tear its skin off too."

* * *

Brain matter dripping from my titanium fingers. Colin cries against a rock, his chain limp across the ground leading up to him.  
His eyes wide and full of fear.

The death of several invaders occurs long before I truly awake. All I'm left with is the splattered bodies, the gore on my hands and the smoking shotgun I've already holstered.  
Another creature, trying to escape in the distance. Kicking up a cloud of dust behind him in the darkness.

You've gotten away, have you? Feet carry me towards him before he even realizes he's supposed to react.  
Check my weapon - not loaded. Just slug cylinders and empty casings. Fine. Remove them from my weapon, pocket them. Grunt as I step on the frightened creature's midsection.

* * *

"May a god disparage the gods," it says.

Shotgun snaps open. Bury the red shells into place. A frightened whimper. He tries to crawl away. "May a god disparage the gods."

Weapon snaps shut. His last words have already been spoken. Thumb the hammer back on both barrels and pull the trigger.  
Brain and bits of skull matter splash against my face. Cleanliness hasn't concerned me for quite some time.

Fortunate it was indeed, to face the infinite so painlessly. The barrels smoke as the shells are ejected.

Leaning his head to the left, too far to the left, he both feels and hears it crack. Satisfying.  
Eyes close before he's turned around entirely and they reopen. Everything on the horizon scanned, all the details considered.  
Potential bread and butter still where he left him. Cold and crying under the stars, cowering against a rock.

My weighted boots approach his useless, quivering frame.

* * *

"Do you see how it is?"

"Y-yes."

"Do you see how this will end?"

"Y... Y-yes."

"Your master is waiting for the both of us. Do this or don't. There are no alternatives."

* * *

The horizon bleeds sunlight into the creature's eyes and it stirs. I tug lightly on the chain, a joke as it should see it.  
Cuffed hands run up and down its face and I draw my weapon. He knows I won't use it, it's just a reminder of his position. And mine.

One foot in front of the other. South we go, towards a city I only recall from a database, but feel from something else entirely.

Robotropolis. Used to be known as Mobotropolis before Dr. Ivo Robotnik took control.  
A significance felt but not understood.  
The words on my lips, as my dry circuited tongue traces them - Man Town.

Here we come.

* * *

ÆdS - 2016


	2. The dying world

_  
The dying world 

* * *

"This way," he says, a granola bar in his left hand. The nuts and berries crunch between his rotten teeth. "We'll find a good vantage point."

He's little more than a dog on a chain, leading me through the less colonized areas of the canyons. Currently armed with a sawed off shotgun, and an empty .357 revolver. Empty 1911. Runt tried to bargain with an empty weapon. Searched, no extra bullets. Such a commodity to waste so frivolously in exchange for your pathetic life when you'll lose it anyway.  
Resistance is futile.  
Sun is long since down and far from up. The creature only gets as much sleep as it needs - nothing more, nothing less. The harsh desert wind blowing through the cool of the night would be harsh to a lesser being. And so it is for the skinny bald man in the assless chaps and the collar, nothing more.

"Fruh-from up here we c-can see a good vantage point," an advantage I don't need, but welcome nonetheless. "K-keep vigilant, fuh-friend." How naive.

The precautions of something so puny don't apply to a creature, a creation such as I.  
The past considered. My titanium hand cracking human and mobian bone alike. The skull crushing, the bleeding, the screaming. Everything flashes before my eyes in an instant. Physical and emotional loss.  
I've been here before - and I'll be here again.

The sound of boots crunching against the sand and rock.  
Colin's heavy panting. Signs of weakness.  
Around the side of a firmly perched peak rock on the canyon and there's his beloved vantage point. Encampment below. Bonfire. Thirteen or more, the exact number to me would come in an instant if I thought it was worth bothering.  
"Nuh-not too far away," he squeaks out. "Nuh-not far away from Muh-Mobotropolis. Man Town."

Terrified.  
Not even an advanced being such as I could put the coward to rest. I can tell he tries to find comfort in me, but he is mistaken.  
He is not my friend - regardless of what may or may not have occurred in our past lives. Merely a job.  
An objective.  
It doesn't matter. None of this matters. 

* * *

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't eat cheese before noon. A picture is worth a thousand words. Never eat cheese before noon."

"Slow down a bit, eh? Stop and sniff at the dandelions with your nasal cavities."

"I'd say that about captures it in a bag and beats it over a dead horse until all its bones break and it bleeds to death. Just make sure your nuggets are in order, taken care of. I don't like picking your worthless ass up after you've collapsed."

"I need the scratch." 

* * *

"No." Examine my own hand. A disconnect. Nothing means anything - the realm of a fantasy without the benefits. A dream without meaning.  
"C-c-come on," Snively says, tugging at the chain in my hand. What will all of this accomplish? "Thuh-they could spot us with their buh. Buh. Binoculars. I-if you have to stop, stuh-stay behind the rocks."

Somehow this works.

Almost crash into the boulder, planting my shoulder against it, not bothering to look his way. Circuits strain and wires overheat. Functions searching for an unattainable clarity. Not seeing the full picture, not sure if the clouds shrouding it can or will disperse.

Fantasy without pleasantries.  
"What brings you out here, Snively?" That name again. Where did it come from? His back against the wall. Whimpers that can't be helped. Pebbles imprisoned by gravity, dragged downwards by their very shackles. Clicks echoing their journey down the canyon. "More importantly, how do I know you?"

Panicked, he looks around. Trying to contain himself.  
"Sh-shhhh-sh," the distance closes, he whispers. "L-like I said, sir. I was kuh-kidnapped, stolen from master. C-c-c-c-c-can we tuh-talk about this later?"

Sole grinds against sand. They're coming.

"The other thing. The important one," drunk isn't something I ever recall being, but I think it would be an appropriate way to describe how I feel. "How do I know you?"

He frantically scoots backwards towards me, his chain quietly rattling, stopping just short of me and cowering.  
"P-please," I wonder what he's more afraid of. Them or me. Why? "Wuh-we have to get out of h-here. Th-they'll kill us. Asking qu-questions at a time like this is suh-suh-suicide, sir." More pebbles follow their fallen comrade's path down the canyon. "Guh-guh-get us out of h-here and b-b-back to Man T-Town."

Drunk. Disconnected. Like I've been on a bender. Where have I heard this word.  
"Fool. If you don't tell me I'll kill you myself."

Pleading. Begging. More useless nonsense from the creature.  
"Wuh-we m-made you what y-you are today - yuh-your corpse was b-beginning to rot and we tried to make a sluh-slave out of you. Th-things didn't quite exactly go as pl-planned. B-bigger, fuh-faster, struh-stronger, you were built, yes. A last d-ditch effort t-to hold off the destruction of the w-world sir," an anxious whine. Futile attempts at brevity. "Muh-mind control, brute power, c-c-conditioned with sk-k-kill. T-tampering with p-perfection," anguish, the death rattle of heartbreak ringing in my ears. Another memory like a shattered mirror. Traces of emotions from the parts of me that don't exist anymore. "H-however, you c-cannot add to what is already perfect."

Sinister laughter of children invades my ears. Circus music and the like.  
Gravity retrieves the slugloaded double barrel shotgun from my fingertips and rakes it to the ground. The weight of my body joins the weapon. His terrified face comes in and out of focus above me as my body gradually slides down the abrasive rockface and into the dirt.  
Eyes widen in panic, his. Desperate attempts to pull me from the darkness. Exercises in futility. 

* * *

"Are you okay?"

"A dream I had. A nightmare. I'm shaken, you see? Shook."

"What did you dream about? It could be important."

"The world lost its life to a frivolous attempt at a last ditch effort to reclaim glory. A witch was summoned, a witch what erased any semblance of civilization we had left. A bloodthirsty wrath upon your enemy that went horribly wrong. And I. I was destroyed. Rebuilt. A former shell of myself, wandering the wastelands for scraps of myself that I couldn't understand. Something familiar lost. We all were, in our own way."

"Hey now. Listen to me. That thing I said about how your bad dream could be important? That was all bullshit. That's meaningless. That means nothing. I'm kind of ashamed of myself for thinking that you could have any sort of meaningful dream after hearing the details of that."

"You were the first I killed. I destroyed what was left of you, not because you deserved it, but out of a subconscious desire for me to find purpose. To go on doing the only thing I was designed for. The only thing I remembered from my past life. Death. Destruction. War. Victory. Defeat."

"There is absolutely no way that shit is ever going to happen, buddy. Not on my watch."

"How could you possibly be sure of something like this? Dream or no, you have to confront your own weaknesses to make them strengths."

"Buddy. I'd swim through a whole lake full of lava for a chilidog. I'd eat my own feces out of a used taco bell wrapper if it meant victory in the hand and a chilidog in the bush. I'll punch and I'll kick until I don't have limbs. I'll munch my way to the pearly gates and use my ass as a rocket ship to get to the barrier of fire and brimstone. Aint nobody gonna finger this butthole when it has this kinda diarrhea, no sir. I'm a survivor. I'm not going to give up. I will survive. Keep on survivin'. I'll kill god for a chilidog." 

* * *

Pearly gates? Barrier of fire and brimstone? Chilidog? What.

Snively grinds his cuffed hands against his groin while the man chokes him. Pick up the double barrel shotgun. Examine it.  
He didn't even try. The creature's face is turning blue and purple. His codpiece is in the way. After a struggle to release himself, it's full on masturbation. An act of human and mobian kind I have no recollection of, despite feeling a personal connection to it buried under the fog of an enigma.  
"Ggrrrggggghhhh!" he gurgles out, kicking and screaming in the air, his face growing purple. "Rrrrrgggghhhllll! HHHHHHHHHHHHH." A joke.

Titanium hand flattens itself out and jabs the thumb and the ringfinger directly into the bridge of his nose. Bone cracks. Skin tears. My fingers curl around the backside of his nose as he drops my ejaculating companion, spraying and staining his knees with crusted white splotches.  
Stuff I know vs. stuff I was programmed to know.  
"Thanks," he wheezes, more calm than he's ever been surrounded by idiots that want to kill him. "Just in time. Now, get the others." I can't help myself.

Tear out the center of his face to reveal eyes, his brain sloshing out of where his face used to be along his slack lower jaw. Taking his eyes with it.  
Drop the filth. Consider my drenched, gory hand.  
So meaningless.

"H-help!" his cries mean nothing. Six of them unload automatic weapons into what's supposed to pass as my body. Lead bounces off or gets pushed out by the enhanced human made genetics of my self-sustaining flesh. Slugs tinkling against sand and rocks. I'd laugh if I had the emotion to.

Cock my head to the side, grab my sawed-off shotgun.

Take aim. Fire.  
Take aim. Fire.

Reload, removing the conversion cylinders. Stuff it full of shells and holster the weapon. Looks like it's my turn, as this coward has already gotten his rocks off and these chumps are already regretting thinking they could kill a creature as advanced as I.  
Admire the damage done on the boulder behind me. Slugs stuck in holes, peppered in an arbitrary lateral line. No skill. No precision. The same marks left on me, only permanent.  
Magazines drop. Magazines are loaded.  
They try again.

"Puh-please!" he begs, hoping I destroy them before they destroy him. I stand here thinking about things. "Please kill them!"  
For a moment, I'm as useless as he is.

The word glory is both foreign and anticipated. A meager salary. Scraps elude me - echoes of laughter and screams. The new flesh - the flesh I don't remember, recall, clamor for.

Slow motion. Time is convoluted. Lights blur and actions are perceived objectively. Uselessness.  
Smack a bullet from the air, as slowly as the world moves around me. A grimace takes hold of my lower lip. Sparks of emotion leave their traces on what's left of my soul as fur and flesh is removed from my face to reveal the true mechanisms keeping me alive. 

* * *

Rock and roll.

A familiar song.

Snively's desperate screams behind me echo throughout the canyon. My hand grabs the enemy's neck, digs into the flesh, rips the spine loose.  
Trying to think back on the kind of violence I inflicted before this all took place.  
Using the spinal cord to swing the almost severed head into his companion's face, cracking the skull of its forehead open and sending him limp to the ground.  
Grab the spinal cord just under the neck, wielding it almost like a halberd.

Force the bottom end of the spinal cord into someone's chest, just under the breastbone. Piercing their heart.  
I can do lots of crazy shit.  
Retrieve the rifle from the fallen idiot's hand with my right hand, freshly reloaded. Colin is a coward enough to already be sniveling on the ground - perhaps where he got his nickname. Probably.

Open fire. Kneecaps busting, spleens splitting and nuggets ruptured - enemies dropping in every direction. Writing a skill or a stats sheet on me would be a futile endeavor, for my actions and words and situational awareness seems to heighten with every obstacle. Holster the double barrel and snatch a glock from a common enemy. One arm snags headshots with the glock nine millimeter while the other arm uses the snagged assault rifle to puncture hearts.  
The speed at which my robotic hand pulls the trigger on the glock is indistinguishable from the fully automatic setting of the rifle - if only a millisecond faster.

Anyone who could potentially notice such a feat is dead before they touch the ground.

Staring at the pathetic creature huddled up against the rock. The job. The objective.  
The creature behind me overestimates its advantage.

Roundhouse kick his head clean off his body as I turn to face him. Put a couple slugs in it from my double barreled sawed of shotgun just to be sure.  
Bodyparts suspended in the sky fall to the ground almost as if in the wind I send through them as I turn to look around. Another worthless opposition removed from my existence - a small war I don't exactly remember happening.  
Every bullet accounted for. The rifle empty. The glock has three rounds. Drop the former and holster the latter in my belt. Three shots means three targets, less foes I have to punch to death.

I can't blame myself for having fun. 

* * *

"Thuh-thank you!" Snively mumbles almost incoherently. "All you needed was a good push, I wuh-wager! A buh-bit of inspiration!"

Wheezing, whines. All from the worthless creature that ejaculated on his enemy's boots instead of fighting.  
Examine his face, his body. Scanning.  
Bullet shattered his left elbow, splitting the joint. He's crying, of course. The gushing blood down his forearm and onto his dark leather chaps reminds me of something beautiful that was once destroyed. Not him, something else, something from a past life. Maybe something destroyed by my own hand. I can't remember. The feelings are recalled, the details are not.

"What's wrong with me?! Is my dick still out?!" he checks his codpiece to make sure it's in place and it is. His one talent - zipping up. "Don't mind me none. My arm is wrecked but we still need to get out of this desert. Reload, smoke 'em if you got 'em."

Words calling him out on the moron he is caught in my throat. Could be an asset, a metal detector for the shrapnel what's left of my exploded headgum.  
"Begrudge," the little man in my throat says, with full permission from my lips and gums and tongue. "I can only hope you know where to go from here, Snivvy-poo."  
Search the corpses for gold and bullets abound. Magazines deposited into my leather fanny pack and the discarded weapon picked up and reloaded. Cocked. Ready to kill.

"Ah, ye-yes," it squeaks, handing me the other end of its chain. "I am a masterplanner." 

* * *

ÆdS - 2016


	3. Heavenly body

_  
Heavenly body 

* * *

"Fuckle."

Canyon's swimming with them, almost to the very maximum of its capabilities.

The sound of bikes and trucks roaring. Gunfire cracking and echoing in the distance.

Thought they were all dead, that we'd take the quick way through. Straight down the middle. Wrong.  
Scan, count, assess. Forget the details for a second. I think the chump on the leash is crying.  
Check the slide of my rifle. Cocked and locked. Flick off the safety absentmindedly. They're circling us, don't even bother readying my weapon.

There's at least 50 mobians. Explosives, grenades, rocket launchers. Machine guns that fire bullets larger than Snively's cock. I know, I've seen it. The heavy stuff. Bitch on a tank. Studded nose.  
The name Dulcy rings a bell but doesn't have any emotional impact on me.  
Cowards mutter. Chumps speak amongst themselves. 'Holy shit I thought they were just a legend.' 'There's no way that's who or what I think it is.' 'Just what the fuck are you insinuating you repugnant pile of filth?' 'Does my pinky smell funny to you?'  
Questions without answers. I've got some of my own.

Dragon picks up a microphone and it's really stupid and I hate it. To speak. Why would you need a microphone to do that?  
"Give up, dongs," her voice calls out from the poorly mounted speakers on her tank. She doesn't need a projectile weapon - a tank sitting on top of a tank. Wielding a big club. Reinforced from the business end to the handle. She squeezes it without so much as a flinch. "Give us your weapons and mechanics and just walk away. Nobody else has to lose their lives, but it would be our pleasure to take it from you."

"Thuh-they'll fuck me to death. They'll wuh-wait until your guard is down, and obliterate you," Snively cries from his usual position at the end of my leash. He clearly only knows the love of his Fat Daddy Uncle Julian. No clear skills or sense of self-preservation. "Alternatively they'll fuh-fuck me until they're bored and then truh-try to convert me to sci-suh-suh-sci-scientology for shits and guh-giggles while they scruh-scrap you for parts."

He says a bunch of things. Cowardly things. I could imagine my circumstances eternally as a giant fantasy instead of bad placement. I could pretend none of this ever existed, and I could pretend to exist on another plane of reality entirely.  
But.

"Keep vigilant," I say to the worthless sack of shit under my breath. But you could put a dollop of god on it. Words aren't enough, they haven't been. Neither have prayers. It's a joke. It's a gamble whether or not I'll get paid by the end of this, but the puny dickhead is all I have.

Stare down the dragon.  
"If you let us leave, you keep your lives," it's such a joke. 

* * *

"Murder. Chaos. Mutilation. It happened in all of our butts. We can't go back now."

"Son. Don't tell me you tried to dipolipogridleebear. I dun told ye. You don't dipolipogridleebear. Dipolipogridleebear, he dipolipoyou."

"I got stabbed in the bunghole. He pulled it out and smelled it. And you're the only thing around to witness the disaster."

"I smelled it too."

"Sometimes I desire to stick my pinky in your butthole. Pull it out and smell it. Comment about how it's not up to my standards. Wipe it on your lip."

"We all got a job." 

* * *

Sprinting, I'd reckon. Beforetime thoughts take me to a place behind. Quite rather, to be sure. Shoes a delight. Sunlight. Bewilderment. Maybe I cared and I don't anymore. Something means nothing and that everything is useless.  
Yank the chain to bring him down on his back. Narrowly avoids a projectile. He tries to cry but doesn't have the air. Instead he huffs and puffs irregularly as I drag him in between murders. Not even using projectiles at this point.

Get hard.  
Fist penetrates a mammal. A pile of intestines like the bow around a present. The present - his life.

Smell the fist - a reminder.  
This place is no stranger to my panting loins. A familiar tingle, though.

"Luh-luh-let's leave please! Wuh! Wuh! Go!" Snively tries to make sense of his emotions. He nuzzles up to my breast and I coddle him, like I would any pathetic creature terrified of change. Suckling on my learherclad teat, he soothes himself. "Mrrggghhhfff."

I feel like a blessed mother.  
Lips fiercely suckling away at my mechanical teat. Oil-like substance dribbling out to satiate the nature of the beast. Moan a bit, as if I ever felt mobian. My nipples leak blackened mashed potato and another thing goes wrong. Nothing worth addressing.

Incredible.  
"MILK!" it whines, kicking and screaming. Dawns on me how close he is to my personal being, sucking on a rude nipple of mine and chugging to be clear. Let go, and his limp body suckles like a leach.  
"MRRRGHHHFFF!" it creeps into my diamond hard nip.

"Thanks for nothing, pal," I say, tearing the creature off with a ravenous pop. "Your god is a fart in the wind."  
Eye contact. It makes me feel uncomfortable, too. Like I'm talking to a child. Farting in the genepool.

Notice I'm crouching - how come I'm doing that? Stand up and his long nose brushes against my crotch. I feel a slight twitch but I pretend not to notice.  
Gay things don't turn me on. I am way too manly.

He's wrong - a thing that shouldn't exist.  
Shortness aside, he's pathetic in every single other way. His wide eyes look up at me as if I were to have some sort of answer for the chaotic turn his life has taken. Big, sad eyes asking me why.

Deep in his eyes, reminding me of marbles. Spilled over a table.  
Rolling circles that look deep and mean nothing.

Snively cries in his assless chaps, bending over face first into the sand and exposing his anus. Even spreading his cheeks. Waiting for a suitor to make him scream.  
"Don't make fun of me!" the pathetic creature cries. "Master wanted me this way! Master needed me this way!"

His butthole sucks up some sand and I'm not really impressed. "Did he pull it out? Make you smell it?"  
Turns out he did, and I could make him smell my pinky whenever I'd like. All I had to do was shove it in first. Pull it out. Smell it. "You're a fat stinky waste of skin. I can only hope Robotnik still wants a whiff of this." Me make bad funnies. Bonesack no appreciate.

A cry and a whine. Sad eyes.  
"Abomination," he spits. "Godlessness in a can. Godlessness IS the can. Wrongminded devices, should be destroyed." Kicking. Crying. "I need you to kill everything, I need you to take me home."

Reflection in a puddle of mud offers a glance at myself. Don't take it - it's not worth it. Won't recognize myself anyway.  
Gift to the chump with my robotic hands. A cup of water. Shakes, looks away. "Look at yourself," it says. "I cry myself to sleep every single night. I haven't missed a single sunset."

Nothing. It doesn't matter - none of this matters. The creature holds what's left of my face in its hands and it means nothing to me.  
It's never meant anything to me. "I don't think god was ever here or ever will be." a fraction of myself removed. Replaced. "I'll fart on any goblin. My resources have been compromised."

More tears.  
"I've farted goblins and goblined farts." the creature turns the lights on in a general sort of way. Broader meaning dissecting context. Father wishes he could be here. "Why are you still here? Am I? A fruitless gargle after brunch."

Music to the ears of the readers. Picture your favorite song, Listen to it.  
Are you listening to it? It's good. You are pleased with this story.

Wind whistles through the trees and a bittersweet smile creeps across my face. It's not long before sunset, but I don't mind. The light leaves us.  
Tugging on the chain. The leash.

Open my eyes and give a real glance to the glory before me.  
My reflection sucks me to itself. It is not me - it is an idea of me, quite rather, to be sure. Colors I don't exactly recognize, faces I don't make. Furry. I'm no skinny. I aint no fucking roundhead.  
There's very little of what I remember me being me being in this image. Very little left to the imagination, very little imagination left in the urine.  
"What is this garbage," I say about my face. "I don't remember this garbage but I imagine this garbage."

"You're not you," it says as it cleans itself with its tongue. "You're not yourself and will never be yourself again. You are a sad pile of ruin. Disgrace in a bottle. Shame in a cloud. Disappointment. Failure."

I could ask him where his stutter went, but that's all me. I'm not paying full attention and that's fine. Whatever.

Notice my ability to jerk off the entire story. Not just physically, but well, you know.  
Walk the walk, talk the talk, sex the sex, eat the shits. See myself. Disappointed. Not so much, at the same time.

"What is this?" not-answerman doesn't answer. As per the usual. Shadow of myself grows taller. Disappointment.

"I come out here to poop," it says. "Sometimes. When I need to poop by myself. And it's okay." Snively reminds me of a cockroach. Scurrying into the darkness at the first sign of light.

The water leaks through my black titanium fingertips. It's fine. 

* * *

"Almost there," the creature speaks, and I find it kind of offensive. Makes his body like a cross at the end of my leash - arms wide outstretched. Legs together. Facing the specks of the city on the horizon.

The sun rises. He places rocks around the pit. I guess the worthless isn't so worthless after all.  
Fire is made, even by the simplest of men. Add fuel, what's left of the trees. Burn dry wood. Rip apart what he can't even begin to handle.

Sun crawls into the sky why the creature shivers, struggles to find warmth.

"We're either going to die out here or we're going to make history what it is today."  
Maybe I misjudged you. Perhaps not so pathetic - not not pathetic, but maybe not so.

Check my 1911. Three shots.  
Open the cylinder on my .357. Eight shots.  
Bag of shells and a double-barrel loaded and ready. What a game.

Narrow my eyes at the bag of waste. "Do you have a plan?" Curling up, he's exactly as I always pictured him. Exactly as I always imagined. Though, I don't remember imagining much of anything.

"There's grenades and shit stuffed under that rock behind you. Should be. I'm fucking tired. Gonna nap. Wake me if god comes."

"War," I say. "What is it good for?"

"Absolutely nothing," he says. He's wrapped himself in a boneless tent. "We called down the thunder and god is going to bring it."

Smirk.  
"Why come?"

He smiles, comforted. Not even realizing just how much this moment is defining him in the eyes of the reader. Popping one eye open, his iris darting over to me. A wink and a smile - a joke and a teacup. A god and a forgotten smell.  
The creature makes himself comfortable and wraps himself up in the discarded tentskin, his head resting awkwardly against jagged rock and general discomfort. Eyes fluttering open and shut as he drifts between our own world and another yet defined.  
"God made the goblin and it bleeds for naught." 

* * *

ÆdS - 2016


	4. Dawdle

_  
Dawdle 

* * *

Cries from the grave.  
The echoes of the former rattle through my mind incessantly. Obnoxious. Inept. Unreliable. A useless husk I left behind continues to haunt me. Angry ghosts.  
Whatever.

To be as worthless as Snively - had to stop and rest. Sleep. Eat. Consumes fluids. Releases other fluids.

"A-almost to the muh-main road!" his muffled voice cries out from under his pansy ass helmet and over the loud roars of the engine. Snively suggested we steel a vehicle with a cage, but that's not my style. I like the chopper. If he doesn't like it, he can walk or I can drag him behind me. I gave him the choice and he chose wisely. He sits in my lap like a frightened animal. Grinds his bare ass against my crotch and grunts. Pathetic. "Luh-left to hit it head on, ruh-right to follow it to our duh-destination."

Only little girls wear helmets, and they still manage to scrape their pansy-ass knees. Headlights off. I can see clearly even in the darkest of darkness. Cord wrapped loosely around my shoulder. One end dangles a nail gun over the open road. The other leads to a high powered battery strapped to my leatherclad back. Left arm nursing a rocket launcher against the side of my face. Bag of grenades in my teeth.  
Desert's just as vast as its ever been. Dirt and rocks and canyons as far as the eye can see. Ripping ass like you wouldn't, but I would. If we crash, we just lose the meatsack. Something in my mind tells me this is all leading towards something much bigger than the runt.  
Naturally I'm the one holding all the important supplies - his frail body can only handle so much.

He doesn't see the ramp in the dark.  
"Nugget up," the warning softer than he can hear, but he responds quickly enough when the wheels leave the dirt. Lean far enough off the side of the bike to hang ten and regain my posture. The creature screeches cursewords carelessly. How quaint. A wave of sparks crashes over us, engulfing us as the bike skids across the worn and broken asphalt. Snively, as if he were built into the chopper itself. High gear drags us leaning dangerously to the right as the rubber on the wheels cling desperately to the ground. Experience realigns us perfectly and we are balanced once again, heading full speed down the road in an instant.

Urine soaks his assless chaps.  
"AAAAA! AAAA!" Snively cries, visibly disturbed. Laugh to myself, but feel no real emotion. Just the understanding of the concept of satisfaction. These thoughts come and go. "Puh-please don't k-kill me!" Could comfort it but won't.

Smirk atop the vibrating thunder that carries us. Something sexy about a manly bike - a loud chopper tearing through the quiet of the night. More traces. More echoes of the creature I used to be. Memories of this and other things I've done, little more than second nature to me now. An embryo taking shape in the beforetimes.  
"Chump," his whole body is shaking like a rattle. Must be terrified of the nature of nature. The motorbike glides seamlessly along the world below. Snaking along with what's left of the road. Boring as all hell. A question I don't need to ask. "This right?"

More ass grinding against my crotch.  
"Yuh-yes. This should take us right to Rob-buh-bobo-tropolis." Man Town. A familiarity - a yearning. "My muh-master is there. D-defending the city with an army of mobians, roboticized muh-mobians and even suh-some humans. It wuh-won't be easy to get into, even with me as c-collateral."

What's left of my almost worthless former self would have me feeling anxious. Perhaps terrified. I feel the bike beneath me. Mouth and body defy me. Say things, do things. Unsure of what me really is. Disguised by darkness even my eyes can't penetrate.  
"H-he'll p-punish me tonight," I see the ghost of myself hovering over me, looking down on me with disappointed eyes, "p-p-punish me for being a b-bad boy," I still feel nothing. I thought Snively was some kinda masterplanner. 

* * *

"Are you my god or my goblin?"

"Can't stop - addicted to the shindig."

"We've both had a bad smell of it. It'd be easy to quit. Why not quit?"

"Choptop, he says he's gonna win big."

"I'll pull it out and make you smell it again - I'll bring your tongue with it, so you can taste it this time."

"Choose not a life of imitation. Distant cousins to the reservation."

"I'm proud of you. Get up, dingus. It's time for fisticuffs." 

* * *

The universe is chaos. Shit often just kind of happens and it answers to nobody. Ask why. Get nothing. You're part of this. The things you destroy, the things you create. Sadness that you cause. Broken pieces in the wake of your step. New demons being born every second. The echoes of your existence will make their mark, regardless whether or not you or anybody else is around to hear or appreciate them.  
Chumps at the gate saw me coming - readied their weapons. Grabbed the meat and kicked off the bike just as they started to open fire. Grunts of all sorts, husks of everything too desperate to carve their own path.

Airborne - lead the bike and open fire with the rocket launcher. Poor fucks in front of the gate don't even realize what's about to hit them. Clutch tightly to the useless shell for the extra momentum. Right arm hanging onto my screaming bargaining chip. His pathetic cries muddled with gunfire.  
Chopper spins awkwardly into a group of four or five. Could count. Won't. Force sends them crashing into the gate and the rocket follows up, blowing it wide open and obliterating the opposition.

Drop the useless cylinder when it's done carrying me and fall at the same rate. Ardent bits of metal and flesh whiz past my head arbitrarily.  
"Fuck me! Fuck meee," the chip cries into the cool autumn air as gravity claims us. Bodies burn. So does the gate. More gunfire. Didn't take out all of them - not even close. The element of surprise only lasts so long.

Alarm sounding. Earsplitting noise, if I were to be subject to such a thing. Fires crackle. Bits of exploded equipment and flesh cook in the night. The road embraces my boots, right arm still clutching Snively tight against me.

Impact sends shockwaves up my legs and into my taint. Knees flowing with momentum, bending rapidly. Tactical roll. Catch the empty rocket launcher just as I hit the ground, and just before it does. Toss it towards my enemies and led slugs plink off of it, shielding us.  
Set the twerp down and snag the bag of grenades from my mouth with my left hand. Cartoonishly off balance. His body kisses the ground.  
Right hand snatches them, removing the pins with the thumb and tosses them at points of interest almost automatically and with the speed of a slot machine paying out. Hot shrapnel tearing apart flesh and dismantling robotic figures.  
A few make cover. Discard the empty sack and advance. One quick dropped loop from my shoulder and the nail gun finds its home comfortably in my hand. Grip tightens and trigger finger holds off at the ready.

Creature makes itself known. Screaming and discharging his weapon. He gets off maybe two shots before two nails are buried in his forehead - and one in his throat. Body gurgles and falls.  
Second, two nails in the throat. Third, a sniper, four nails through the eye of his scope. Unload into a fat goon's face.  
Toss the useless weapon to the side. No signs of life.

Except.  
Turn around to face the sniveling little coward. Snively. Such an appropriate name, his master gave. Words escape me.  
"Any pieces missing?" not concern, not curiosity. Business.

"Aaa~ aaa~" it squeaks pitifully. "Muh-muh-"

"Use your words," I say impatiently, approaching. "Why am I here?" a question, abrupt.  
Boots crunch against gravel. Advance.

"P-p-p-p-" he whines, rolling over in either pain or shock. "Pluh-lease!"

A scrape and the world loses its color. The lights are gone - smoke surrounds me. Violin playing in the distance for pieces of myself I no longer recognize.  
Snively's skin goes limp, sags over his bones as his skeleton breaks free from its sarcophagus of meat. Tearing through it like a pushing a rock through a sheet of wet toilet paper. Organs and skin plopping to its feet.

Shambling, it crawls towards me. Touches my leather pant leg. Looks up at me with dead, hollow eyes. Slackjawed. It speaks to me.  
"You've destroyed everything you've ever loved. Everything you've ever cared about. You are a hollow husk of the mobian you once were. Your morals and values were the first to go - along with the one you looked up to the most. Sonic the hedgehog is dead because of you. So many... So many that you swore to value until your final steps. And yet you keep walking, don't you? Walking over their corpses."

The ghosts of my past clawing at my shins. Skeleton crawling up my torso. Draw the .357 from my belt. Eight shots, locked and loaded. Pull the hammer back as I press it against my temple. The steel should be cold against my skin but I feel nothing.  
Caress the trigger guard, then the trigger softly, lovingly. Slowly.

"The bones of the weak crumble beneath you. You can't escape us - you can't escape your fate."

Pull the trigger and the creature shrieks through static. Blink. Nothing's changed. The runt is back in his meatsack. Clinging tightly to my shins. Crying.  
Barrel of the gun still smoking. My head didn't so much as cock in response, the bullet just went right through - temple to temple.

I can almost feel the cold night wind blowing through the gap in my skull. The gap that's already correcting, healing itself.  
Look down at the pathetic crying human clinging to my shins.

"I nuh-need you until we g-guh-get to master," it trembles.

Decock my weapon. Stuff it back into my belt. There's no escaping any of this.

"What day is it?"

"The thuh-thirty-first of October, suh-sir." Lightheaded. If you could call it that. More the understanding of a definition. "Wuh-we don't have a lot of t-time, they'll be on their w-way."  
Is it midnight or noon? Regardless, may be this be the most memorable Halloween of our very timeline. 

* * *

ÆdS - 2016


End file.
